Affective Fallacy

An important principle of New
Criticism is the avoidance of what William K. Wimsatt and
Monroe C. Beardsley called the Affective Fallacy  the
fallacy of confusing a work of literature with its effects on the
reader.

To a New Critic, meaning exists in the words of the text, and can
therefore be observed objectively. Its emotional effect on actual
readers is irrelevant.

Reader-response critics rebelled against Wimsatt and Beardsley,
and argued that this "fallacy" is no fallacy at all.